Strand of Hair May Point To Who Has Breast Cancer

By NANCY BETH JACKSON

Published: March 4, 1999

X-ray analysis of a single hair may lead to a simple test to detect breast cancer, Australian researchers suggest in the current issue of the journal Nature.

In four small studies on hair from healthy subjects and patients with breast cancer, scientists from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, found that hair from the healthy women had a different molecular structure than hair from the cancer patients.

Early tests on scalp hair showed some inconsistencies, which the team attributed to chemical processes like hair coloring or permanents. So the researchers decided to use pubic hair.

''We correctly identified all the samples from women with breast cancer, but further investigation into the sensitivity and specificity of this test is necessary,'' concluded the researchers, led by Veronica James at New South Wales. ''It is possible that this may lead to a simple and reliable screening method for breast cancer using a single pubic hair.''

But cancer specialists not involved with the research noted the small sample size of the study and said much more study was needed before a simple hair analysis joined existing methods for detecting cancer, like mammograms and blood tests.

''This is the kind of report that is important for generating a hypothesis and thereafter generating other careful research, but it's a long way from this to a clinically useful test,'' said Dr. Larry Norton, chief of solid tumor oncology at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.

Using a technique called synchrotron X-ray scattering, the researchers found that all samples from 23 breast cancer patients showed the same change in scattering patterns. Among the 28 healthy subjects, samples from 24 were considered normal.

The researchers also studied healthy women who had a family history of breast cancer or who had earlier been found to have a mutation of the BRCA1 gene that is associated with a higher risk of breast cancer. Of the five women in that category, three had the same pattern as breast cancer patients while the other two showed a partial change.

That suggests that an analysis of hair could show whether a healthy woman had the mutation.

Dr. Norton described the research among this high-risk group as ''especially provocative'' and worthy of further study.

''But maybe the association between hair and cancer is not too farfetched,'' Dr. Norton said in a telephone interview. ''Why should a drug that kills cancer cells also make hair fall out? Maybe there is biochemical similarity.''